Description

The Best Travel Writing 2008 is the fifth volume in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing—from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. These 29 stories cover the globe, from discovering a piece of the past in Beirut to probing the layers of Flamenco in Spain to submitting to psychic surgery in the Philippines. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisine. In The Best Travel Writing 2008 readers will:

• Hear the singing sand dunes on the Skeleton Coast in Namibia with Clive Crook

• Kayak a wild, flooding river in the Peruvian Amazon with Sarahlee Lawrence

• Fathom the scale of the universe and the scope of the earth on a years-long sailing voyage with Matthew Link

• Travel on horseback over the Mongolian steppes to the fabled city of Karakorum with Erika Connor

• Discover the dark side of paradise on the island of Tortola with Richard Goodman

• Follow in the footsteps of The Snow Leopard with Michael McCarthy in Nepal

• Redefine the meaning of “Adventure Traveler” in Thailand with Rolf Potts…and much more.

PRAISE FOR THE BEST TRAVEL WRITING SERIES

"Travelers' Tales has thrived by seizing on our perpetual fascination for armchair traveling, including this annual roundup of delightful (and sometimes dreadful) wayfaring adventures from all corners of the globe."
—The Washington Post

Extended Copyright Information

Copyright 2008 Solas House, Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction copyright 2008 by Sara Wheeler.

About the Author

James O'Reilly, publisher of Travelers' Tales, was born in England and raised in San Francisco. He graduated from Dartmouth College and wrote mystery serials before becoming a travel writer in the early 1980s. He's visited more than forty-five countries, along the way meditating with monks in Tibet, participating in West African voodoo rituals, living in the French Alps, and hanging out the laundry with nuns in Florence and penguins in Antarctica. He travels extensively with his wife, Wenda, and their three daughters. They live in Palo Alto, California, where they also publish art games and books for children at Birdcage Press (www.birdcagepress.com).

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

From the crew of many boats.
Lit with precious understanding.
Of the sun—this vagabond in me.
Only ourself who is the other.
This sprightly new collection gives the lie to those wearily familiar mantras that all the journeys have been done, that globalization has robbed travel of meaning, that ...

Copyright

Copyright 2008 by Solas House, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.